They’re sure giving EA a run for their
moneyuniversally despised revulsion…It’s sad how consumers have zero rights when it comes to digital content. Companies can retroactively make changes, removing content legitimately bought by consumers with no repercussions. I get “not owning” but for a company to collect money for services provided and not actually provide those services will never not astound me.
idk how madden players can put so much time and money into ultimate team only for the service to end after 2 years. and they do it every single year
Same way FIFA players do and have been doing, to the tune of over 1 billion dollars since 2018.
Because the FTC is toothless when it comes to EULAs. You can sign your rights away by agreeing to it (which is required to play the game).
This is basically why I don’t buy anything that I don’t think I can protect from being fucked with.
That’s all ownership is really.
If buying isn’t owning then piracy isn’t stealing.
Right? Call it what you will, changing terms of sale or use after taking someone’s money is wrong.
Yeah I can’t even comprehend how that just passes as totally normal these days. Make it all make sense…
There’s a great initiative going on right now trying to hold Ubisoft and other game publishers accountable for shitty practices like this by trying to petition governments from a few different nations to create legal protections for people to continue to have access to their games they purchased after the publisher decides to abandon a game. If you live in an EU country especially, you might be able to help sign a petition still: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
The petition doesn’t seem to be active, i.e. signable, right now.
There’s a bunch of petitions and actions possible on various parts of the world. It’s not just one meaningless online petition but a comprehensive plan to bring this to attention of various governments worldwide. Keep an eye out, there might be something you can help with in the future depending on where you live.
I purchased Rayman Legends on a big Steam sale because it is a great game and I wanted to play it again. I installed it. I hit play. It tried to install the Ubisoft launcher. I uninstalled it and refunded.
Fuck off, Ubisoft.
Is there a source for Ubisoft wondering why they are a hated company or did you just make that up
Dude there’s literally an entire article about them saying that gamers should ‘get comfortable with not owning their games’, a lot of Ubisoft Connect accounts that had ‘The Crew’ have had their licenses revoked, and the game has been shut down since April 1st.
Okay but my question was specifically if Ubisoft was asking that question at the same time they are making these decisions. That last panel would be funnier if it were true.
Pretty sure it’s just a figure of speech, bud
Man I was so sad when Ubisoft bought Blue Byte. I always held out hope that they’d switch publishers eventually but they never did and then they got bought. Now I know I’ll always have to put up with Ubisoft bullshit to play Anno, one of my all time favourite franchises.
I legit haven’t bought a game anywhere but steam in over a decade. I simply do not trust the motives or responsibility of any other publisher. And at this point, I’m too afraid of them yoinking their game after I’ve paid for it that I’ll likely never change.
GOG is good too.
We all should be hitting GOG up more often if we want the legit ONLY good competition for steam to not die out one day. They are as good as steam in many ways.
I just wish they’d support Linux like Valve have
I mean, they host Linux versions of games, it’s close. I get what you mean though, a native Linux program like they have for Windows and MacOS would be great.
GOG is fantastic but Steam keeps getting my business because of all the extras I really depend on like cloud saves, game library sharing, proton, Big picture and controller mapping.
As soon as GOG has linux support at least 80% as good as steam, I’ll jump right over. I used to always prefer GOG over Steam but I’ve really felt that they don’t care about supporting my platform at all unless that’s changed in recent times so I’m happier giving Valve my cut.
Ubisoft of 2010 (ish) had some real great games. Shame they’ve become what they are now.
2010ish?
They’ve had some shoddy shit, but they also have some solid titles in their backlog. The Rayman series, P.O.D, Gex, Splinter Cell, the original Rainbow Six titles, Beyond Good and Evil.
I’ll take my pills and go sit down now.
The recent Prince of Persia game was actually pretty good. I definitely acquired it on my Switch thru alternate methods, but I almost felt bad because I do wish for them to return to that kind of game design on the regular versus a one-off with that title.
RIP Red Storm Entertainment.
Here’s a neat tip:
You can go to most publisher or developer pages on Steam and “ignore” them to prevent Steam from ever showing your their slop again.
Example:
- Go to: https://store.steampowered.com/developer/Ubisoft
- Click the “Settings” cog.
- “Ignore this creator”
You can do the same with EA, 2K, etc. Don’t even give these parasites microseconds of your time when they release their next slop title.
Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to apply to publishers or developers that don’t have a landing page
LEMMY GOLD!!! 😳
All this has done is taught me not to BUY Ubisoft games.
I learnt that over a decade ago.
Don’t buy a Ubisoft, EA, or frankly any big publisher game.
I wouldn’t trust CDPR so easily yet after how diabolical the launch of CP2077 was.
The launch was terrible, but there are some things that keep them apart from the rest of terrible launches.
Cyberpunk 2077 was a really ambitious game, with a lot of new mechanics and incredible graphics. Beasts like that are really difficult to optimize for a large range of computers with different specs, so at first it ran poorly on some.
The most notably buggy release was the PS4 one. And rightfully so. They were trying to run a truly next gen game on a console which was more than a decade old. They not only had to optimize the game, but they basically made a completely different game, with different assets and engines, which was really difficult to do. Still, it was too much for the console, especially old PS4s that were full of dust or had old fans and were overheating.
Another important fact is that users were also pressuring CDPR into releasing Cyberpunk 2077. It was delayed at least once (maybe twice, I don’t remember), and people wanted to play the game. They probably had to choose between delaying it another time or releasing it without polishing it that much.
I believe it was Cyberpunk 2077 that started the trend of “release now fix later” games. However, I don’t think they really did it on purpose. The game was too ambitious for its own good, and having to develop, optimize and test two basically different versions of it was too big of a task for a studio that in today’s terms wasn’t even that big. The rest of the AAA producers just realized that CDPR still won loads of money at launch, and decided to release incomplete games on purpose, after seeing that CDPR could make profits that way.
But must importantly, CDPR did an amazing job at fixing the game, unlike many other studios releasing broken AAAs. They optimized the code, fixed most of the bugs, improved the AI massively and made the game really stable, to the point where I’ve seen it running at 40 FPS on 10+ year old overheating laptops. Even though it took a while, they still delivered the game they promised to their buyers.
I believe it was Cyberpunk 2077 that started the trend of “release now fix later” games.
Hardly. That’s been a thing for a while now.
Decades
I think release then fix became common as soon as internet distribution became practical
Back when everything was on physical media the releases were more polished
I would argue No Man’s Sky started the trend of “release now fix later” but I suppose they are not a big AAA studio. I suppose CDPR wasn’t really considered as AAA until the release of Witcher 3.
You guys don’t have good long-term memory.
Thanks for providing a lot of insight to the conversation.
Cyberpunk 2077 was a really ambitious game, with a lot of new mechanics and incredible graphics. Beasts like that are really difficult to optimize for a large range of computers with different specs, so at first it ran poorly on some.
What about all the other “Ambitious games” that we’ve had over the years that come out just fine? A game being ambitious does not excuse a company releasing the game in what is blatantly an unfinished state. This isn’t the case of a game having a few performance hiccups here and there but rather egregious bugs and severe performance issues across the board. This is stuff that is all over youtube, reddit, twitter and so on. It’s pretty well documented how bad the game was.
The most notably buggy release was the PS4 one. And rightfully so. They were trying to run a truly next gen game on a console which was more than a decade old. They not only had to optimize the game, but they basically made a completely different game, with different assets and engines, which was really difficult to do. Still, it was too much for the console, especially old PS4s that were full of dust or had old fans and were overheating.
Again, this really isn’t an excuse. They had the power the can the next gen versions of the game if it was so difficult to pull off. They also had the power to delay the game in order to make sure that it was ready for launch. They could have done so many things such that the last gen versions of the day would either never see the light of day or be ready for launch. CDPR are a big enough studio to pull something like this off. They’re not a small indie studio.
Another important fact is that users were also pressuring CDPR into releasing Cyberpunk 2077. It was delayed at least once (maybe twice, I don’t remember), and people wanted to play the game. They probably had to choose between delaying it another time or releasing it without polishing it that much.
Yes, there may have been pressure. But no, the consumer base does not have anywhere near enough power over corporations like you’re trying to imply. Games aren’t just released early because “Oh no the consumers are getting angy”. Though once again this was their fault due to them giving the consumer a completely unrealistic initial release date that they obviously could not hit, considering the absolute state of the game at launch.
The most likely explanation is that they were simply trying to get the game out as soon as possible to cash in and they absolutely did not want to miss a major sales period such as Christmas. They were simply trying to drop a minimal viable product with plans to fix it later. Turns out they dropped a less than minimally viable product in their rush to make some dosh. Knowingly too if you look into the allegations that I’ll link later.
I believe it was Cyberpunk 2077 that started the trend of “release now fix later” games.
No. “Release broken fix later” has been a thing for maybe the last decade. Do people not remember shitshows like AC:Unity? Cyberpunk is most definitely not the first game to be “Release broken, fix later”.
However, I don’t think they really did it on purpose.
I don’t think it was dropped broken on purpose. But I do think it was an attempt to drop the usual bare minimum product. Just so happens that they miscalculated and dropped something less than minimal. It’s still gross incompetence and shows the consumer they’re more than willing to drop something bare minimum with the promise of fixing it later. Rather than dropping a complete game.
The game was too ambitious for its own good, and having to develop, optimize and test two basically different versions of it was too big of a task for a studio that in today’s terms wasn’t even that big.
Again, not an excuse. They’re a massive studio, big enough to have people that know how to plan a project like this, people that understand their limitations and what is or isn’t achievable. It’s standard project planning practice.
But even then there are allegations that people in the company were aware that the game was not ready to launch.
And yet they still dropped the game.
There is no excuse for the launch of CP2077.
The rest of the AAA producers just realized that CDPR still won loads of money at launch, and decided to release incomplete games on purpose, after seeing that CDPR could make profits that way.
The industry learned this about a decade ago. We’ve been plagued by half baked launched for so long at this point that you don’t have to go far to find out about it.
But must importantly, CDPR did an amazing job at fixing the game, unlike many other studios releasing broken AAAs.
In this case I think it’s less fixing the game and more finishing the development of the game, all things considered. The thing they should have done before releasing the game as if it was a finished product when, in fact, it clearly wasn’t.
There’s fixing a game and there’s what CDPR had to do to CP2077.
Yes, a lot of companies don’t fix their games. But at the same time most of these companies don’t release their games in such a state that they start getting into legal trouble over the launch of their game.
https://www.nme.com/news/cyberpunk-2077-investigated-polish-consumer-protection-agency-2855205
Cyberpunk was such a massive disaster that they didn’t really have much choice other than to finish working on their game. To repair the massive hit to their PR as well as other issues such as the class action and the whole debacle with Sony kicking the game of the PS Store.
Even though it took a while, they still delivered the game they promised to their buyers.
Yes, it’s good that they stuck with the game and did more than the bare minimum to bring it to a better state. But it’s not exactly something to praise them over. It took them ~2 years to bring the game to a state that it should have been in at launch. Instead of launching the game in a finished state, they knowingly dropped the game in an unfinished state. They also put out a review embargo preventing reviewers from informing the consumer about said issues, they actively worked to mislead the consumer about the state of their game.
What CDPR did is absolutely not excusable under any circumstances.
Their next projects should absolutely be scrutinised until they prove that they have learned from their mistakes.
Good on ya. Don’t BUY them.
I wonder how long it’d take until they take down STEEP. I suppose it’s even less popular than The Crew, but I liked it that much I’d pay once more if someone would keep it alive after Ubi does the Ubi thing. Extreme sports are rarely portrayed in games, and for me it would be a huge loss even though I feel like I enjoyed every penny I spent at least thrice.
They know people are making a private server so revoked everyone’s license so that even when they finish it, everyone will have to pirate their own game to play it.
Ubisoft has been trash for a long time now. It’s a shame that they control some good IP, but the company’s too far gone to ever be trustworthy. Save your time and money and just play something else imo.
If they die, other companies will buy that IP
